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Talk:Mag/@comment-186.154.103.243-20180203230932
Today were announced Mag "buffs". I quote because it seems like the shards buff has reverse scaling (stronger at lower levels and weaker at higher levels), and because buffing Chush changes nothing, no uses that ability and for good reason, is garbage. Anyway, I wrote a long ass post in the forums regarding these changes but prob nobody will ever read it, so I'll post it here for other Mag players. There is a TL;DR so you can simply skip and see if something seems interesting. First let me tell you that I like Mag and I used her a lot, mostly because it's not a lazy frame, you actually need to be playing to be successful with her, she is very dynamic and that is a huge plus that out weights her problems for me. Also, I need to clarify that despite her shortcomings I use her for everything and my personal build has proof to be somewhat effective in every mission type but energy reduction sorties. So, I've played her a lot and I play her in all missions types which I believe, gives me the perspective needed to talk about her. In lower levels (1-20) she works just fine, you can actually speed run a lot of things since all it takes is one pull to clear hordes of enemies. In levels 21-40 you can get away by using a mix of polarize and pull, sometimes magnetize. Things get weird in levels 40-80, pull becomes a re-positioning tool so you can cast magnetize to protect yourself and/or objectives; you can also use polarize to deal faster with tougher enemies. Beyond level 80 (and I mark this point because it's Kuva flood) a mix of polarize and magnetize becomes mandatory, but given how energy intensive it is, you gotta spam pull to get enemies out of your way (ironic, eh? spamming 1 to save energy). This is her gameplay as far as I'm concerned and keep it in mind cos it will be necessary for the discussion. First, Mag has no 4, last time I use it was like a month ago and it was an accident, has been this way since WF's dawn (Mag was my starting frame) and no amount of shield will change that. I mean, she is the magnetic frame. why isn't her 4 a 360° repel (yeah an utility skill), BUT, with the added option of holding the key to create a 360° pull. This will be thematically consistent (more so than her current 4), it will be very useful, it will be unique and it will synergize with his kit. Here is a situation, you are in a eximus stronghold and suddenly you are getting swarmed by leachers, you can cast your 4 to give your teammates a respite and respond. Now you are in a defense mission, you can cast the hold version the skill to actually speed the process, much like a fast nova does. In conclusion, I don't like the change, it's a buff yeah, but it won't make anyone use the ability, or you can use it and get killed anyway... and if you don't, it's because the enemies were no threat in the first place and your other skills are better at dealing with them anyway. Second, Mag has no dmg problems, maybe a bit in levels 40-60 where your pull can't deal enough dmg, even when combined with polarize. The current problem is that to kill these enemies you need to either cast 1 to group, then 2 and then 3 (first 3 and then 2 works too depending on the faction), or cast multiple instances of 2 and then 3, it becomes very inefficient in both, energy and time. This cahnge also generates another problem, it remarks magnetize as the center piece of Mag's kit, if you don't cast magnetize and polarize, this buff means nothing, but that is the same mechanic as of now. Why not add the a new mechanic, "now shards react to pull causing dmg to enemies in their path", for once, it rewards you for using two abilities, it solves the weird dmg problems in mid levels and add synergy between pull and polarize, and pull and magnetize, without requiring player to go out of their way building massive amounts of Power Strength. Also how cool would it be to actually rend enemies with the shards inside magnetize when using pull, instead to unload an entire clip to cause dmg. Now, to address the biggest problem Mag has, let's round what she requires: 1- Natural Talent, this is an absolute must, it is the single most important mod for Mag due to her lengthly cast animations, you can't survive without it unless you are camping one room, if you ever intend to leave that room, you need this mod. 2- Vitality, already stated, Mag is squishy and as we all know shields mean nothing when we have massive bleed and toxin procs, btw, never use redirection or any other shield mod or overshield, Mag's base shield is good enough and can be replenished on command (let alone the fact that you have Natural talent for faster cast). 3- Strength, Mag CC is meh, displacements suck as CC, Magnetize is unreliable and already stated that nobody uses Crush, focus on dealing dmg and build P. Strength (don't forget that polarize utility is tied to Strength). 4- Range, even if you are a crazy person that uses Mag for CC, you still need a lot of range 5- Efficiency & Energy, as mentioned above, Mag usually needs to cast several abilities to be effective, she really consumes a lot of energy and unless you have a dependable source of energy you'll need at least Streamline, if you rely on energy pads, you can simply use P. Flow, but you won't do much without either. 5- Duration, this one is weird, if you ever expect to use polarize, you need some duration, at least the base amount, but if you do, magnetize last too much time. Duration is the most flexible stat on Mag but this discrepancy makes no sense, while magnetize can shine on its own, polarize does require to be used in conjunction with magnetize, you want magnetize bubbles to explode relatively fast (most of the time) but then you need to cast a new instance if your duration is too high, and thus increasing the amount of energy needed, I simply use P. Continuity and T. Fortitude to gain some duration without going to high, but I can't stop asking, where is the synergy when the builds for these two abilities go in different directions. Recap: you need Natural Talent, Vitality, Power Strength, Duration, Efficiency/Energy and Duration. This is the biggest problem with Mag, you can't build her since she depends on every single stat in the game and on top of that she has a very low sprint speed, fortunately her augments are pretty bad and none is useful, so at least you won't be wasting mod slots with those. Taking a look at Loki (best frame), he doesn't care about Power Strength and thus one can go crazy piling Duration on him, one can even sacrifice range (100% gives a decent range on his 4). Now imagine how different bad would it be if you couldn't use Narrow Minded on him, terrible, isn't it? Changing Polarize to have a fixed duration and making Range affect the pulse speed will fix the problem, right now pulse speed is 7,5m/s, make it 5m/s so if someone builds a 100% range, then the pulse ends up traveling 50m total (assuming the 5s duration) which isn't crazy at all. TL;DR - Changes doesn't fix a thing - 4th ability is as useless as always, rework it pls. I propose three things: 1- 4th ability to be changed to a 360° repel/pull (tap/hold), 2- make shards react to pull and rend enemies in its path 3- change how Polarize works, give it a fixed duration and in exchange make its travel speed be affected by range.